According to Far, Mac OS X runs “a little faster than Vista” with an SSD drive, but Linux is “always faster” than Vista or Mac OS X — to the tune of 1% to 2% — because like Windows 2000, “it never runs anything in the background.”

Distributions

Slackware

Yes folks, ’tis the season to announce a new release of Slackware. With a shiny new kernel, many package updates, and the newly added ability to install from a Samba share, we bring to you the latest in the stable Slackware 12.x series. Slackware 12.2 ships with the 2.6.27.7 Linux kernel, the Xorg 1.4.2 X server (with many driver, library, and application updates), Xfce 4.4.3, KDE 3.5.10, simplified wired and wireless networking with wicd in /extra, package upgrade management with slackpkg moved into the main tree, support for non-usb-storage digital cameras through libgphoto2, pm-utils (tools to support suspend and hibernate through HAL), and much, much more. This release brings the system up-to-date without compromising stability or compatibility with the 12.x series.

Well folks, it’s that time to announce a new stable Slackware release again. So, without further ado, announcing Slackware version 12.2! Since we’ve moved to supporting the 2.6 kernel series exclusively (and fine-tuned the system to get the most out of it), we feel that Slackware 12.2 has many improvements over our last release (Slackware 12.1) and is a must-have upgrade for any Slackware user.

Fedora

eWEEK Labs has been testing Fedora 10, the latest version of the community-supported Linux-based operating system that serves as a technology proving ground for future Red Hat software products. Here is a rundown on upgrading from Fedora 9 to the current version using the distribution’s handy preupgrade tool.

FSF

This morning the FSF filed a lawsuit against Cisco, alleging that the company has infringed our copyrights by distributing programs under the GNU GPL and LGPL without respecting the licenses’ terms. You’ve probably seen the press release; if you’re especially curious, you might also want to read the complaint. Since we expect a lot of people to be interested in this case, I wanted to take a little time to explain what has happened, and why we’re doing this, in plain language.

Lists

Leftovers

However, an Indian Court is now calling for the software to be banned saying that it “aids terrorists.” Of course, so do maps or photographs of hotels, such as those placed online by the hotels themselves, but people aren’t overreacting and calling for a ban of those things as well. Yes, we can understand the kneejerk reaction here, and the anger over these horrific attacks. But, banning Google Earth isn’t the answer.

The lunacy of the EPO with its patent maximalism will likely go unchecked (and uncorrected) if Battistelli gets his way and turns the EPO into another SIPO (Croatian in the human rights sense and Chinese in the quality sense)

Another long installment in a multi-part series about UPC at times of post-truth Battistelli-led EPO, which pays the media to repeat the lies and pretend that the UPC is inevitable so as to compel politicians to welcome it regardless of desirability and practicability

Implementing yet more of his terrible ideas and so-called 'reforms', Battistelli seems to be racing to the bottom of everything (patent quality, staff experience, labour rights, working conditions, access to justice etc.)

"Good for trolls" is a good way to sum up the Unitary Patent, which would give litigators plenty of business (defendants and plaintiffs, plus commissions on high claims of damages) if it ever became a reality

Microsoft's continued fascination with and participation in the effort to undermine Alice so as to make software patents, which the company uses to blackmail GNU/Linux vendors, widely acceptable and applicable again